Moving from Firefighting to Strategic Leadership as a PM

Hey Product Manager,

I know how frustrating it can be to spend time designing product roadmaps and at the end of mid-year or a year, you only execute a little above 50% of your roadmap

I know there are days when you are constantly being a support staff, responding to tonnes of emails, designing strategy in powerpoint slides that may or may not see the light of the day and many more examples that make us doubt our roles as PM…

I understand all of these environmental variables may or may not be your fault.

Good news there is a way out!!!

You have 2 choices to make, to either Sink or Swim.

If you truly want to pursue a career in Product management then sinking is not an option.

I can hear these questions from your heart,

How can I be more strategic in executing my roadmap to ensure success?

How can I focus on strategic activities that will deliver both short and long-term values?

How do I get my product stakeholders and development team to trust my direction and leadership?

There is a definition of Strategy that I like so much by Michael Porter(HBR 1996)

STRATEGY: It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value.

There are strategic activities that are important to be carried out as PMs. You need to be deliberate about them. Ask yourself how well you do them?

1. Getting Insight (Product feedback from direct product users)
2. Setting Product direction — Product Roadmapping 
3. Supporting your development team
4. Goto Market strategy etc

If you scored low in the activities listed above then you need to do the following:

• Gap Analysis

- Which activities are truly most important?

- Reallocate time & resources to it

• Prioritization

- Use information gathered to prioritise work and FOCUS 

- Setup a meeting with only you to give you some time to think and do meaningful work.

• Identify the root cause

- Is it a process issue?

- Is the support team well trained?

• Diplomatically say NO to work that will bring little or no long-term value.

I hope this helps?

Operational effectiveness != Strategy

Cheers!!!